Free Demon Bound by Caitlin Kittredge Page B

night things, you’re bloody stoned.”
    Jack forced himself back to the surface of waking. Everything was quiet again. No shapes fluttered in the mirrors and no great howling morass cried to him across the Black. The Naughton mansion was, to his senses, dead as a doornail once more.
    Pete laid the back of her hand on his forehead, cradling his skull on her knees. Her nightshirt was cut out in the collar and from his vantage Jack could see the top curves of her breasts, Snow White skin dusted with a helping of Black Irish freckles. He gave what he hoped was a sickly but courageous smile.
    “That feels good, luv.”
    Pete followed his eyes and huffed. “Sit up, you wanker.”
    Jack did as he was told, with great reluctance on the part of his swimming vision and screaming muscles. Pete went and fetched her penlight from her kit, shining it in his eyes.
    “Your pupils are the same size,” Pete said. “Your head isn’t bleeding badly. Just don’t go to sleep for a few hours.” She held out her hand and Jack let her pull him up. The Naughton’s foyer swayed agreeably, like he’d chased the fag with some high-grade opium.
    He held on to Pete. “I’m spent, luv.” He brushed his thumb over the back of her knuckles. “Though you could always keep me awake.”
    “Fuck off.” Pete gave him a gentle shove with her free hand.
    Jack swapped his grip for her waist under the nightshirt, fingers slotting between Pete’s ribs, pulling her flush against him. They were a good fit.
    “’M not joking, Pete.” The terrible thing was, he wasn’t. If Pete had, in that moment, put her hands on him in return, Jack wouldn’t have stopped himself.
    Not for the demon, not because Pete was an innocent in matters of the Black. Jack knew one thing surely about himself and that was, he was rubbish against temptation. Pete was flame and he was paper, and if he touched her he’d burn. No question about the matter.
    “Get some rest,” Pete said softly. “I’m sure the ghosts will keep until morning.”
    Jack rubbed the back of his skull, where a lump roughly the size of the Isle of Man was rising. His back would be a mass of bruises by morning, if the ache along his shoulder blades was anything to go by. “Not this one,” he said. “Pushy bastard. Quite literally.”
    Pete’s brow wrinkled. “Will you be all right?”
    Jack flashed her a grin. It was a cold comfort as she stepped away and adjusted the shirt to cover the flash and curve of skin on her exposed shoulder. “’Course. Go back to bed, darling. I’ll sit up for a bit to make sure me brain stays inside its house.”
    Pete started up the stairs, and then turned back and went on tiptoe, planting a kiss on his bruised cheek.
    Jack watched her go and then shut off the arthritic light and sat on the stairs in the dark, watching the ember of his last fag glow like a dying, faraway sun.
    In a way, the poltergeist shoving him arse over teakettle had been a gift. It meant there was something in Naughton’s house, something dead and full of screaming, clawing rage. The dead silence lied to him, just as he was lying to Pete. It hid the thing that crept and crawled in the Black, exposed itself and vanished again like a movie-screenphantom. The intermittent magic of the Naughton house was a puzzle, but it wasn’t one that could distract him from exorcising a poltergeist. Poltergeists were solid, a good fight and good practice for exorcism. Plus, he could ratchet the charge into the stratosphere for that cunt Naughton, if only to make up for nearly turning his brain into pudding in the man’s grand entry.
    Jack exhaled and watched the smoke rise and curl its fingers around the air until it disappeared, his own small spirit that was soon vanquished.
    The ghost meant he was needed, for at least a little longer. It meant the company of the dead, the only presence Jack had relied on since he was fourteen years old. He had its scent, and even though his sight was changeable and